Crowds & Identities

Making Us Visible in the Cityscape: Organizers’ Reasons for Holding Ramadan Celebrations in Copenhagen's Public Space This qualitative case study examines the motivations behind the first public celebration of Ramadan in Copenhagen's cityscape in 2024, exploring the interplay between visibility, identity recognition...

Making Us Visible in the Cityscape: Organizers’ Reasons for Holding Ramadan Celebrations in Copenhagen's Public Space

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

The Psychology of Virality

Pre-print from @jayvanbavel.bsky.social

osf.io/preprints/ps...

Gardeners urged to collaborate to help moths and hover flies thrive in cities Researchers found moths and hover flies are more negatively affected by urbanisation than bees

Gardeners urged to collaborate to help moths and hover flies thrive in cities

"Researchers found moths and hover flies are more negatively affected by urbanisation than bees"

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

We're currently supporting our Professional Services staff who are going through (yet another) reorganisation. The previous ones didn't work, but this one will - we're told.
Universities are not just academics - they're admin, student support, cleaners, IT, security, groundskeepers, and more.

Blast from the past (2002, in fact) found by @sanjeedah.bsky.social @crowdsidentities.bsky.social

'Protesting is good for you, say @sussex.ac.uk psychologists'

archive.sussex.ac.uk/news/press-r...

thanks for sharing John. One of them happened in Karabük and took very long time to control. besides fires smoke also affected many people in the city (especially the ones who have asthma). In some parts of Turkey the fires still continue.

Tsunami reaches Hawaii and California as earthquake off Russia triggers warnings - live updates Two million people are told to evacuate in Japan after an 8.8 magnitude earthquake, one of the strongest ever, hits Russia's eastern coast.

Coverage I've seen so far of #Tsunami shows mercifully little damage and/or casualties. Also reports from #Hawaii of people being 'civilized' & no 'panic' as they evacuate, which fits with most research into mass emergency behaviour
www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c3...

BIG NEWS: For the first time in six years, Britain's rarest breeding bird has successfully nested in the UK!

A pair of Montagu's Harriers have raised four healthy chicks, all of which have taken their first flights.

‘Climateflation’ could push up UK food prices by more than a third by 2050, report says Exclusive: Increasingly extreme weather a threat to production and supply chains in Britain and elsewhere

‘Climateflation’ could push up UK food prices by more than a third by 2050, report says

"Britain is at risk of a worsening “climateflation” crisis amid the fallout from increasingly extreme weather that could drive up food prices by more than a third by 2050."

www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Wildfires rage in Greece and Turkey as extreme heat persists Firefighters warn of a

Wildfires rage in Greece and Turkey as extreme heat persists

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Social relations in crowds: Recognition, validation and solidarity Social identity research on crowds demonstrates how cognitive self-definition as a crowd member results in conformity to identity-relevant norms. Rather less research has addressed the social-relatio...

'Social relations in crowds: Recognition, validation and solidarity'
Not new but a useful and important study for something we're writing up

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

A year since the wave of riots in which hotels housing asylum-seekers were attacked. Our study examined events in three locations, finding only limited evidence of intentions to protest.
@qeios.bsky.social

Funded by @ukri.org
@behaviourresuk.bsky.social

www.qeios.com/read/17ASAP

More good information for those interested in crowd science & event management. Kudos to the team that produced & shared it as open access! @eventsafety.bsky.social

‘Representations of crowd behaviour in the management of mass emergencies’ was a project funded by @leverhulme.ac.uk

You can find open access papers from this project on our website:

www.sussex.ac.uk/research/lab...

The role of “zero-responders” during 7/7: implications for the emergency services

Funded by @ukri.org

doi.org/10.1108/IJES...

Danny Pike - 07/07/2025 - BBC Sounds Danny brings you the perfect start to your day in Sussex.

I was interviewed for BBC Radio Sussex today about the 20th anniversary of 7/7 to talk about the research I did with @profjohndrury.bsky.social into the collective resilience of those affected by the explosions. My bit starts at 1.13.30 in link below
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

'When hurricane Sandy battered New York, some of the hardest hit communities were on the Rockaway Peninsula. ... Its location makes it a magnet for tropical storms... evacuation is difficult... And yet, the city deliberately pushed poor people, disabled people, and the elderly onto the land.'

PhD Position in Crowd Psychology: www.fz-juelich.de/en/careers/j...

@crowdsidentities.bsky.social

Hi, yes one of the dominant understandings in both academic and policy contexts was of public panic in emergencies - that most people would lose behavioural control and this would spread through the crowd.
sussex.figshare.com/articles/jou...

‘Like working in a volcano’: stories from six countries in Europe on a day of extreme heat How chefs, street performers and cheesemongers struggled to get their jobs done in record-busting temperatures

‘Like working in a volcano’: stories from six countries in Europe on a day of extreme heat

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

<em>British Journal of Social Psychology</em> | Wiley Online Library Confrontational collective actions are neither uncontrolled outbursts of initially pacifist resistance nor mere reactions to helplessness and lack of viable political options. Instead, they serve str...

‘Nothing to lose or a world to win’: Reconsidering efficacy, legitimacy, political trust and repression in confrontational collective action

doi.org/10.1111/bjso...

Thousands meet their MPs to show huge demand for climate action Mass lobby in Westminster kicked off with giant image on white cliffs of Dover stating ‘89% of people want climate action’

Thousands meet their MPs to show huge demand for climate action

More than 5,000 people from across the UK arrived in Westminster on Wednesday to meet their MPs and demand urgent climate action to protect their communities.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Deadly floods could be new normal as Trump guts federal agencies, experts warn Trump’s ‘cuts and chaos’ to agencies are opposite of what’s needed for era of worsening weather disasters, experts say

I talked to @ninalakhani.bsky.social about some issues related to the Texas flood response and about how this is what disasters are going to look like in a world where climate action is banned and our emergency management system is dismantled.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

We take a look back at protests in Brighton across history A stand-out nation-wide protest that took place in 1990 took Brighton by storm as men, women and children protested against the “poll tax” or…

'Looking back at the history of protests in Brighton and Hove'
- just a few of them from the 90s

www.theargus.co.uk/news/2529778...

Collective Memory, Social Identity and Collective Future Imagination in the Crowd: A Case of Anti‐Right‐Wing Protests in Germany In the early 2024, over three million people in Germany took to the streets to protest a secret plan by right-wing extremists to deport individuals with migration background, publicised as ‘re-migrat...

Collective Memory, Social Identity and Collective Future Imagination in the Crowd: A Case of Anti-Right-Wing Protests in Germany

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

The seagulls have landed: why gulls are encroaching on Britain’s towns Avian invaders have coastal communities in Britain and beyond in a flap – but people are learning how to live with them

The seagulls have landed: why gulls are encroaching on Britain’s towns.

Avian invaders have coastal communities in Britain and beyond in a flap – but people are learning how to live with them.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

On the Role of a Social Identity Analysis in Articulating Structure and Collective Action: The 2011 Riots in Tottenham and Hackney Abstract. Theoretical perspectives that give primacy to ideological or structural determinism have dominated criminological analysis of the 2011 English ‘r

On the role of a social identity analysis in articulating structure and collective action: the 2011 riots in Tottenham and Hackney

Funded by @ukri.org

doi.org/10.1093/bjc/...

The Psychology of the Riot Examine the psychological roots of crowd behavior during a riot and the role that psychology plays in policing.

The Psychology of the Riot | Psychology Today, cites out work, but with some poorly chosen bullet points

www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/slig...

"Revolutions that eventually topple governments can start off as riots, but then spread fast, a bit like a forest fire getting out of control. So, all through history, the authorities have always harboured a deep fear of crowd disorder"

Interesting article.

Examining the role of Donald Trump and his supporters in the 2021 assault on the U.S. Capitol: A dual-agency model of identity leadership and engaged followership This article develops a dual-agency model of leadership which treats collective phenomena as a co-production involving both leaders and followers who …

I'm revising my undergraduate module on 'Psychology of Crowd Behaviour', including a new topic on 'Crowds & Leadership'. The new reading list includes the following.

Essential reading:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...